While Dunham says that she is personally “disgusted with Woody Allen’s behavior,” she did bring up an interesting conversation on what many have struggled with, on whether or not you can feel comfortable still enjoying Allen’s work knowing the full extent of the allegations against him. From The Wrap:

“I’m not gonna indict the work,” Dunham said. “I think that you can decide that you don’t want to support the work of somebody who has molested a child. That’s a completely appropriate choice. But going through it and saying, look, he’s told us in 57 ways that he rapes kids — that’s not the thing. The thing is to look at the actual evidence that exists in the world, which I think strongly suggests that Woody Allen is in the wrong. But for me the point is not to go through his one-act plays looking for references to child molestation. Because I’m not comfortable living in a world where art is part of how we convict people of crimes.”

“I mean for me, I haven’t wanted to watch his movies for a long time, partially because of who I think he is and partially because I think they got really bad,” she said.

BURN. In other words, don’t not watch Woody Allen movies because he’s a giant child molester, not watch them because they suck ass. When Marc Maron noted that “bad people have done amazing things,” she continued:

“It’s totally true,” Dunham said. “People who really believe Woody Allen is guilty have not felt comfortable saying that. Because they’re so afraid to lose their connection to his work. And the thing is, I feel like people need to understand that you can hold two positions in your mind. You can know that someone’s made work that’s meaningful to you and also know that they have most likely molested their daughter. … I was so unimpressed by people’s inability to think in less binary ways and to just experience the ambiguity that life is constantly offering up.”

I have to admit, I was with her there until that last line. Please, oh sage 27-year-old, tell me more about how I can be less “binary.” I guess the rest of it does make sense though, or at least it’s a nice thing to be able to tell yourself if Annie Hall is your favorite movie and you still want to sleep at night.

I feel the same way about Gillette stadium no longer playing “Rock and Roll (Part Two)” aka the “Hey!” song, afer touchdowns. It’s like, why can’t these stadium music directors be less binary about Gary Glitter’s pedophelia?

Anyone else not surprised that Lena is taking the stance (except not really, because she says the opposite in like the next fucking line) that just because someone is awful in every way imaginable, they still might produce something worthwhile?

Also, I can’t get over her hipster answer to the question of whether or not she watches Woody Allen movies. “I was not watching Woody Allen before it was cool.” Ugh.

I hate it when people pull that in an interview. If there’s so much “actual” evidence that leads you to your conclusion without any doubts, then share it. It’s like that Kristen Cutler interview where she basically says “I’ve read too much to think vaccinations are good.” What have you read? What do these things say? If you’re not willing to cite your arguments then you’re probably just arguing from a pure emotional position and are, therefore, a moron.

I never thought I’d defend Lena Dunham, but she didn’t say she had a conclusion without any doubts. (And, even if she did, it’s her right to hold an opinion.) What she said was that the evidence strongly indicated he was guilty. And it does — the prosecutor didn’t not prosecute for lack of evidence; it was because he was worried about the reliability of putting a 7-year-old on the stand. (A really common reason child molestation cases aren’t prosecuted, btw.) That is enough of a burden of proof for me to be like, “meh, not going to pay to see the movies by that rapist.” I think that’s a reasonable standard — I’m not hanging the guy on that level of evidence.

This reasoning is absolute bullshit and if the the prosecutor in this case (or any other case) didn’t in fact choose to pursue charges for this reason should be fucking disbarred. If the prosecutor doesn’t pursue charges for that reason then they are making themselves partly responsible for the next time the accused molester decides to go out and do something else.

Prosecutors usually operate from a place of “can I convince 12 strangers beyone a reasonable doubt that this happened?”. And in the case of an “important” celebrity vs. a 7 year old and the mother that said celebrity’s lawyers are going to spend a year discrediting and shredding to pieces…a good majority of prosecutors don’t want to be a part of that. It’s sad but true…in our system, money is what matters.

Lena knows enough about the “evidence” in this matter (of which I don’t think there actually was any?) to be confident that she knows what happened, and yet she refers to Dylan as Woody’s daughter. Pretty sure she’s just talking out of her ass.

@sunny-dee: Surely Dylan’s testimony wouldn’t really matter if the evidence was there. And can’t you make stipulations to keep the victim off the witness stand in cases like this? Maybe I’m wrong about that. Anyway, even if you think you’re going to lose, it seems really shitty to choose not to press charges over a thing like this. Big trials like this back then weren’t the hellish ordeals that they are now, with the paparazzi and the 24-hour news vultures trying to pick every piece of flesh off of everyone involved. I don’t think the fame angle was really enough of an issue that they shouldn’t have gone through with the suit, if they had any evidence.

@sunny-dee Sorry I don’t think I explained my opinion very well. I haven’t looked at the evidence because none of this has anything to do with me. I haven’t even seen a Woody Allen movie outside of stuff that’s been required in classes and that one time my parents rented Match Point (hated it). I completely empathize with the victim and I agree with your point on how difficult this situation is for her.

Which is why I expect more from these influential celebrities. To make the statement that the evidence “strongly suggests that Woody Allen is in the wrong.” without providing any backup just further serve to throw fuel to the media fire. Are you familiar with the Roman Polanski case? The victim herself said that she felt more wounded by the “victim industry” than the actual crime itself (source: [articles.latimes.com]). That’s what I didn’t like about Dunham’s point, that she made an inflammatory statement without any proof to back it up. Now all of her fans and people who hold her in esteem will jump on the bandwagon and, quite literally, repeat history because no one has seemed to learn from that incident. I’m far more inclined to trust the victims in these incidents, but if you’re going to say that you strongly feel a certain way, you should be obligated to do so responsibly.

I tend to err on the side of someone “wronged”, particularly in something as nasty as this. I don’t watch his movies so that isn’t even an issue. But aside from that natural tendency, I have no dog in this fight.

I see why people believe in god and an afterlife. It let’s them sleep at night when they don’t know whether or not to do something about a guy like this because a “higher power” will take care of it. The rest of us, not so sure.

Well. Terry Richardson, a known scumbag and abuser and user of very young woman who currently has a substantial petition running for magazines to stop using him was her best friends fiance for years. She even posed for him. So the kind of speaking out where no-one can really say who was right and who was wrong is ok for her but when there are mutliple accounts from multiple people about one man date-raping models for the last decade then “its ok, he is a friend and my publicist suggested I should do the photoshoot, I will look cool to the tartan wearing crowd.” Hypocrite

Bottom line, when you watch the works of Woody Allen or Roman Polanski, you are supporting child rapists. I don’t care how allegedly great their “art” is. I will not watch anything that either of them have a hand in. If those old creeps would just die already, the world would be a much better place.

You’re also assuming that Allen did in fact rape/ molest a child. It’s just been allegations with no evidence, and no official charges have been brought against Allen. You can argue that by supporting Allen, you’re supporting an alleged child rapist/molester, but that’s not nearly the same thing.